NOVA Open 2018: Day 2

The big event for me on Day 2 (Friday) was the 3-round Direct Action Infinity Tournament I’d signed myself up for, far too many months ago to remember what I’d been thinking.

Ok, I know what I’d been thinking: “Brendon, you don’t play many games. This will encourage you to get out of the studio, play some games.”

Note to future self: That kind of motivation doesn’t work.

I went into the tournament with well theory-crafted, but poorly practiced lists.

I also went into the tournament without a tournament tray. I’m clearly a professional.

Round 1: Decapitation

Round One I was paired up against Russ, a Tohaa player. He won the initiative roll and informed me I’d be deploying first on the side of the table with nearly zero vertical terrain.

So, I deployed all of my super elite, super tough dudes behind cover.

He then proceeded to drop his Viral Sniper on the tower in the middle of his side of the board.

I chose to go first.

He killed all of my mans as they left cover and tried to move forwards in order to kill his mans.

That’s about all I remember. The rest is just a black haze of die rolls and sadness. The one shining moment I had was killing the sniper! Revenge was mine!!!

Russ was my most experienced opponent of the three I played. He had an answer for nearly all of my questions, and he was kind enough to help me work through how my Antipersonnel Mines worked. After our game, he pointed out the huge disparity in the terrain on our table to the TOs, and it was tweaked for subsequent rounds.

Round 2: Frontline

The next round I was paired up against Chris and his Yu Jing.

Again, my opponent won the initiative roll and declared he would set up first on his choice of sides. I chose to go first, again, having learned nothing from the previous game.

Thankfully, this time my opponent deployed entirely behind cover, so things worked out in my favor. I was able to move around unimpeded, and I therefore moved all the right stuffs into the exactly the best positions.

See, here are all of my helper bots helping my big bot:

The thingie on my stack of order tokens is a homemade Deployable Repeater. It’s a walkie-talkie welded on top of a stick. Budget cuts are a bitch.

The game went back and forth with heavy swings. He took a turn working to kill my Tag, and succeeded. Then, he dropped in an Advanced Deployment guy to try and take out überHacker Gabriel DeFersen, but he landed inside DeFersen’s Hacking Area, and died to a Trinity ARO.

MIND BULLETS!!!

On the last turn, my opponent maneuvered heavily to try and put as many points as possible into the center zone. My Total Reaction bot was the star of the show, and subsequently put down anyone that poked their head out.

In the end, the only point scored was my Father-Knight Hacker skewering a ninja that my opponent had thoroughly convinced me was a mine. That was my classified mission, and by the power of Space Jesus, I won the game, 1 to 0.

Praise be, praise be.

My game with Chris was the most educational of them all. Not only did we have an absolute blast over how badly our dice spiked or failed us, but we shortly got on a first-name basis with the TOs over some of our crazy shenanigans we were trying to pull off.

Round 3: Deadly Dance

My final opponent for the event was Sean, also piloting a Yu Jing force – though his was the ISS sectorial. We fought over a beautiful desert town that had lit awnings over the bridges.

This game was largely a repeat of my first game. The scenario forced me out from cover, and Sean’s multiple fire teams were highly effective in shutting down any sort of advance.

In the end, all of my attempts to shift Sean’s control zone to something other than his side of the board were ineffective. I ended up stupidly throwing away Defersen and my medic on an unnecessary suicide run, and it was difficult to recover from that when I had to move further to contest the zone we were fighting over.

My game with Sean was the most cinematic of my games. There were rockets flying everywhere, an epic struggle over a choke point, and a failed last ditch effort to win.

In the end, though, my 1-2 record earned me a spot in the top half of the field, thanks largely to the absolute slaughter that was game 2 (neither of us had much left at the end of that game).

Also, apparently ITS Season 9 had just ended, and Season 10 had just started, so this was the first tournament reported for Season 10. Ever.

So, for a day or so, I was ranked #8 in the world in Infinity.

I hereby announce my retirement from the circuit. That’s the best it’ll ever get, I’m going out on top, baby!!

Lunch

After all of that hot dice rollin’ action, it was time to reward myself with a meatball sub from Bozelli’s, a staple for all NOVA Open con-goers.

Fusilier Angus for scale. And, because I apparently accidentally left him on a table, and one of my opponents was kind enough to return him. He hung around with me for the rest of the day.

Seminar 4: Painting Skin Tones with Soshie Bauer

My second (and last) event for Day 2 was a painting class with Soshie. Her favored skin tone method is all about building up skin tones over a green base. The idea behind it is that the green mimics the tissue and bluish blood under the peachy surface.

One of the big take-aways for me was that using washes is an integral part of the layering / glazing process.

Note the texture of the skin on the stomachs in the side-by-side below:

The left is pre-wash, the right is post. The left has some chalkiness and small ridges from the brush strokes. The right is far smoother, and a bit warmer (we were using a reddish brown wash).

Before class was over, I also managed to play a bit with doing some transparent cloth (always a fan favorite, apparently), and adding some yellow highlights to the uppermost bits.

Boom, baby!

Like all my models from classes, she won’t go beyond this point, but I definitely want to try out the green base for skin method on a model. I think it lends some nice color contract between the peachy colors and the greenish shadows.